Consistent weekend for Valvoline SynPower Ford

The Tasman Motorsports Group (TMG) Valvoline SynPower Ford had a consistent weekend at the TR Group 250 held at Pukekohe, Round 3 of the V8 SuperTourer Series

Driver Andrew Waite spent most of the weekend inside the top 10 during practice sessions, qualified 7th and 9th for the first two races going on to finish 7th and 10th. The third and final feature race of the weekend saw Waite start from 7th place going on to finish 11th in the time shorted event.

Waite said he and the team learned a lot about the car over the course of the weekend and the speed of the car was encouraging as the team looks ahead to the rest of the season.

“The weekend went pretty well aside from the results of race two and three which was a case of getting caught up with the errors of other drivers on track. I was hit by the ‘9’ car in both races, which cost me places. It goes to show, if you don’t qualify well and get yourself up the front where the guys race each other clean, you run the high risk of getting caught up in the antics of others.”

“Apart from that, it was good to be back out there and have reasonable pace,” says Waite.

Race 3 saw the team roll the dice and switch to slick tyres as the track dried. The race had started wet, with the leaders electing to run the entire race on wet tyres on a drying track. With slick tyres fitted, Waite went on to set the second fastest lap of the race.

“We rolled the dice there, coming in to change four tyres will put you two laps down at Pukekohe due to it being such a short lap. We managed to get back onto the lead lap, but with the shortened race, we just ran out of time.”

“We’re constantly learning more and more about these cars every time we go racing. We learnt a lot this weekend, which was one of our main goals ahead of Round 4 back at Pukekohe in a month’s time.”

“Round 4 will be the biggest event of the year as far as crowd goes, as the V8 SuperTourer series will be running as a support class to the Australian V8 Supercars. Everyone will be looking to bank a good result.”